


Another Fourth of July

by thunderbird_dragon



Category: Thunderbirds, thunderbirds are go
Genre: Family, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 21:24:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14505768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderbird_dragon/pseuds/thunderbird_dragon
Summary: Whilst waiting for the Tracy boys to return for a fourth of July barbeque, Grandma muses over an earlier fourth of July, when her Jeff was only eight years old - a day that transformed their lives forever.





	Another Fourth of July

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Grandma POV and totally my head cannon, there doesn't appear to be any info on her husband, except for his name in some references and that he was a Kansas wheat farmer - but there is nothing to say it wasn't at sea before then! I just love to play with the idea that the sea is in the family as much as the air is, sorry Jeff.  
> Also decided in the pic that it would be obvious where Virgil got his good looks - his granddad!

                       

 

**A 'Grandma's POV' fic**

Another Fourth of July.

Another celebration here at Tracy Island delayed for the boys, they would all had to wait a while for their party until they had finished their rescue. All of my boys were involved. John and Alan were in space trying to re-establish and stabilise a failing satellite before the whole thing fell to Earth, whilst Virgil, Scott and Gordon had been fighting the fires and dealing with the emergencies for the bits of the satellite that had already been falling for hours and hours now. And Kayo? She was hunting her Uncle, she thought… no, we all thought that he was behind the satellite’s demise.

So – another Fourth of July, the barbeque foods are back in the fridge and me? I'm sat wringing my hands worrying about them all.

“You’ve never told me about when you first knew Jeff was going to be an astronaut. Were you and your husband concerned?” Bless Brains for always trying to keep my mind occupied, it was a kindness that he was good at and I always appreciated his diversions, no matter how contrived they may be.

“Do you know Brains, it damned near broke my husband’s heart! Grant had always hoped that Jeff would want to go to sea, like generations of his family had before him."

I had to stop to watch the boys’ indicators board, John and Alan had been separated and it worried me more. As soon as I knew John had his eye on Alan again I tried to settle down to tell the tale of that other Fourth of July!

“Jeff was eight I think, yes eight, Fourth of July 2017, clever, smarter than most kids his age and we had the chance to go to NASA’s big display. We thought it was good for his education. Well, he ran right up to the first astronaut suit and declared that he was going to be an astronaut when he grew up! Ha! Grant’s face!”

“H h horrified?” Brain’s asked, he’d not known Jeff’s father long but thought he knew the answer to that one.

“Horrified! Oh yes, he’d only been out of the US Navy for five years by then, settled down on the farm. But, he'd come home with such stories of adventures and travels that young Jefferson seemed to simply lap up.  Jeff had seemed so keen on the sea and the navy – then that day at NASA…” My voice drifted away a little as I remembered that moment that had changed our lives forever.

Poor Grant - horrified didn’t begin to describe it.

The sea meant the world to him, as did the Navy, it was in his blood, so he’d always assumed that his boy would follow him into the service.

There again, the Airforce was in my blood, but that was where I had served for the fourteen years before Jeff’s birth; that was where I met Grant, I was seconded to his Aircraft Carrier, the George H W Bush, we served together there for over a year. I hadn’t talked as much about my service years, Grant’s always sounded so much more interesting than mine, but the Airforce was the traditional route into Space at the time. I felt a little to blame.

Why Jeff chose the sky over the sea surprised both of us. But to Grant’s credit, he was a wonderful dad and if his only son wanted to be an astronaut, then he was going to encourage him every inch of the way.

Oh, the number of times we were told, ‘All little boys want to be astronauts! He’ll grow out of it!” But Jeff and his father knew differently, I just encouraged and supported both of them. And the morning Jeff blasted off for space on his first trip - oh our hearts may have been in our hands in terror for him – but we were the proudest parents that had ever lived.

I suddenly realised that Brain’s was still smiling mildly at me, almost as though he could read my thoughts. “When I met your Grant, he seemed to be very proud of his son and what he had achieved.”

“Oh yes, he came round to the idea very quickly Brains.” Then I chuckled, even surprising myself.

“W what?” Brains couldn’t help grinning along with me.

I had to take a moment or two to recover, then told him, “My Grant never gave up on the idea of getting a member of the family to take up a life at sea, as each of the boys came along he blasted them with tales of the oceans…” I huffed a little at the memory, a smile still gently with me, then add. “Of course it only stuck with Gordon.”

“H how did Jeff take that?”

I couldn’t help laughing out loud at that, “Poetic justice Brains! Jeff was livid that one of his ‘sky boys’ was more for the sea, but Grant took him to one side and told him to man up and accept it like he’d had too!”

“Thunderbird Five to Tracy Island, we’ve done up here, Alan’s dropped me off and I’m monitoring the stabilising signals from here. It’s all looking good!”

“That’s great to hear, John. We’ve finished up too, so I guess we can all go home for a while!” Scott replied from Thunderbird One.

“Whooooho! Does that mean we get to do the barbeque?” Alan hooted.

“Barbeque! You’ve gotta be kidding!” Virgil’s low tones calmed the excitement instantly, “Alan, we’re so tired, we’re probably gonna do nothing but sleep!”

“Oooh SLEEP!” Scott agreed! “Sounds like the winner to me!”

“Works for me too!” Echoed John.

There was the briefest of silences where everyone expected Gordon to comment too but he was already asleep, curled up in the co-pilots seat of Thunderbird Two.

“Wha?...|oh come on guys!” The disappointment in young Alan’s voice was too much for me to cope with.

“Okay, okay, here’s the deal. I’ll put the Barbie on quickly, we’ll eat quickly then you can sleep.” I compromise and added, “John, get your butt down here, Scott and Virgil get here as soon as you can. Oh and Virgil, wake Gordon up, Alan’s insisting we celebrate Fourth of July!”

 

…….. “At least if Grandma’s cooking quickly, there’s less chance of it being burnt offerings” Scott chuckled thinking that his comms to home were off.

Big Mistake!!!

I like to jam them on so that I know what’s going on.

“I HEARD THAT YOUNG MAN, AND YOU’LL BE CLEANING THE BARBEQUE AFTER WE’VE EATEN…. BEFORE YOU GET TO SLEEP!”

**Author's Note:**

> For those who like the details – USS George H W Bush is a Nimiz supercarrier and I chose her because she was commissioned just 5 days after Jeff Tracy’s birth - ahhhh


End file.
